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Are your kids pushing your buttons?

Sentinel & Enterprise

Updated:
04/07/2013 06:38:49 AM EDT

Parent Forward By Bonnie J. Toomey

In the grocery store a 10-year-old boy begged his mother for a Wii game. He promised to stop nagging her if she'd just say yes. It was obvious he had started to get under her skin while he continued to beg. And his mother unloaded the cart all by herself.

Promise to stop nagging her?

The cashier rolled her eyes as the mother reached under the cart for a heavy jug of laundry detergent. It was clear from the frustrated and exhausted look on his mom's face that her son was wearing her down, and I could see her caving in to his demands.

Why do we let our kids push our buttons? Aren't we supposed to be in the driver's seat?

Maybe parents are just trying too hard.

An older friend of mine worries that her daughter tries to be more like a friend to her young grandchildren, and my friend just can't understand how that could be good for her daughter's children in the long run. She worries they may have a tougher time learning a sense of respect and responsibility.

But the double-edged sword is that many kids have two parents who have to work full time.

This sets parents up for a major guilt trip. I'm really sad when I see parents doling out bribes and rewards large and small to try to compensate for that lack of time spent with their kids.

It cheapens everything. It says, "My child can be bought."

Words like "earn" and "reward" are really code for quick fixes, and the phrase "we'll see" said under pressure really means a low-down-miserable "yes.

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" And misery loves company. This defeatist attitude of the new guilt-ridden parent seems to be more the norm, and is dangerously close to being celebrated.

"Oh, kids will be kids; isn't the way they carry on cute?" Of course they will be kids, but does it make it OK to bend to their will just because they are so good at making us feel so bad?

Parents are holding themselves for ransom.

There is an interesting article in Family Fun magazine this month. It caught my eye with the teaser in hip lower case font "good manners pay off" and a photo illustration of an artful stack of quarters. The pink blurb on the page encourages parents around the country to send in their creative parenting ideas for a chance to see them in print and to win $100. The following line begins the story of one of those ideas, which did win the magazine contest:

"On a recent vacation I noticed I had to remind my children repeatedly to say 'thank you,'" writes a mom of two young children from California. She writes how she and her husband decided to let the kids earn souvenir money by remembering their manners.

"Each child earned a quarter every time he or she said 'thank you' without prompting," continued the advice.

Earn?

And the real payoff for this mom was when people commented on how wonderful her kid's manners were!

The fact that this idea warranted sharing with millions of other parents is scary. This counts as visionary parenting advice from and for readers. Did I miss something, or aren't we as parents supposed to expect our kids to know how to say thank you from the time they can talk -- without being paid off?

The woman who paid her kids to say thank you is right about one thing. It is the most wonderful feeling in the world when people take notice of your children for using their manners.

But how many shiny new quarters is it going to take?

It's all about what you expect as a parent, what you believe in. And if you believe in shiny new quarters, then so will your kids.

Kids are really good at pulling our emotional chains and pushing our very sensitive buttons. Why, because we love them so much and maybe because we "let them" too much. And it's what kids will try again and again to do, especially if they see that this kind of button-pushing works.

This quarter-flipping mom is not the only parent to have ever been embarrassed by her children's actions.

Why not promise your kids something they can really bank on, the belief that you have the radical and clinically proven program for breaking manipulative behavior before it starts (and for getting them back on track, if it already has) before it's too late.

The title of Dr. David Swanson's new book is indicative of the challenges families face today: "Help -- My Kid is Driving Me Crazy: 17 Ways Kids Manipulate Their Parents, And What You Can Do About It." He cautions parents not to descend into an emotional battle with their kids, because that's when you've lost.

It's not a question of what it means to be a good parent, it's not a question of stepping away from all that guilt, it's not even a question of the tougher times we supposedly live in. It's just a question of whether we are brave enough and smart enough to step up and do the work of parenting without breaking open another roll of quarters.

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